PayPal freezes over $275,000 in donations to email service

ProtonMail was supposed to be an easy email encryption tool that would finally give us an answer to Internet surveillance around the world. Instead, PayPal has frozen over $275,000 in donations to the project because, a PayPal representative told the company, the American payment service is not sure if ProtonMail is legal. Of course, it is absolutely legal to encrypt email. The freeze remains in place.

Most incredible of all, the PayPal representative was unsure if ProtonMail has the necessary government approval to encrypt emails, as though anyone who encrypts needs a license to do so.

ProtonMail doesn't need government approval, by the way, but it has it anyway. The encryption used by ProtonMail has been unquestionably legal since the 1990s. If that's not enough, the Constitution's First Amendment protects encryption code and its Fourth Amendment guarantees against unreasonable searches, exactly what encryption protects against.

PayPal did not respond to request for comment in time for publication.

#4863048 Posted on: 07/02/2014 11:49 AM
PayPal users have only themselves to blame for this.
Looks like they are the only ones who didn't know that PayPal is a department of the NSA, who attempt to keep an eye on Joe Public at all costs.

NAMEk
Master Guru

Posts: 514
Joined: 2006-05-26

#4863094 Posted on: 07/02/2014 01:13 PM
Paypal is a global scam...

orky87
Master Guru

Posts: 150
Joined: 2010-03-27

#4863098 Posted on: 07/02/2014 01:18 PM
Didn't exact thing happen to wiki leak founder? PayPal simply froze his account and they do this to small businesses too. It's a great tool for manipulation that's for sure.

Humanoid_1
Master Guru

Posts: 426
Joined: 2009-10-14

#4863135 Posted on: 07/02/2014 02:35 PM
Dark stuff indeed...

I have heard about many crowd funded projects having their donated backers funds frozen, then drip fed at PayPal's discretion.

Paypal gives the excuse that they do not trust that the project might succeed or be legitimate and are freezing backers donated funds to protect the backers (who do Not want to be protected in this manner - after all the funds were "Donated" - therefore Given and non-retrievable in most backed projects that reached their funding goal)
- PayPal have Far Overstepped their bounds !!!

This hurts or even causes such projects to fail as they no longer have access to the funds they needed to successfully fund their project. Paypal also do not listen to reason in most cases I have seen, when requested to release sufficient funds to allow the project to even get started.

I hope Paypal get put in their place and Soon.

Veeshush
Maha Guru

Posts: 1099
Joined: 2010-11-28

#4863164 Posted on: 07/02/2014 03:15 PM
There's still Startmail, Countermail, Darkmail and others. So I don't see this being a NSA move to censor secure email or whatnot- they're too late.

It's either PayPal being stupid or maybe they truly think the service is illegal or a scam (which to be honest, there has been a ton of "NSA-proof" emails popping up and I don't doubt some of them are borderline scams).

SHS
Member Guru

Posts: 94
Joined: 2001-05-02

#4863262 Posted on: 07/02/2014 05:36 PM
Gee why dose everything have to be so misleading, You do know that the funds are automatic refund back to the owner and by the everything is a global scam never trust any one, And PayPal has restored its account any way.

umeng2002
Master Guru

Posts: 654
Joined: 2006-09-02

#4863681 Posted on: 07/03/2014 02:54 AM
Just a delay until the NSA can backdoor them. I only have paypal for ebay. Bitcoin seems better frankly.

#4863802 Posted on: 07/03/2014 09:27 AM
Does Amazon report directly to NSA when a customer buys an item which they may consider questionable, like Chinese-manufactured SmartPhones, even though they are purchased from South Korea?